EBIT unveils AW24 collection, deepens dive into mental health awareness

EBIT — or Enjoy Being in Transition — is aiming to spark a stronger conversation around mental health with its new AW24 collection and campaign. 

The Italy-based label founded by ex-JW Anderson chief Simon Whitehouse at the height of the pandemic offers gender-neutral, organic luxury causalwear and its newest offer is dubbed Psycho Penpals [E100]. It will be launching for the new season with a campaign featuring like-minded ‘models’.

This second seasonal release from the socially minded brand follows the debut SS24 True Stories [E050] collection and will drop this autumn in time for October’s World Mental Health Month.

The company said the new range “deepens the label’s commitment to sparking dialogue about – and, perhaps, to fundamentally changing – how the fashion community addresses and communicates around mental health”.

And the new collection’s name is the starting point as it “reclaims an often ‘negative’ term – ‘psycho’ – and socialises it, celebrating freedom of expression and shared intimacies through the idea of one-to-one correspondence”. 

The title also “evokes the many ways in which mental health challenges continue to be unconsciously dismissed in our everyday speech and invites us all to open our minds to new modes of communication and connection”.

In design terns, it means the word Psycho (“sometimes punk, and sometimes taboo”) appears “subtly or boldly” in print on a selection of garments, dungarees, T-shirts and fingerless gloves, “representing sincerity and pride in diversity, and in divergence”.

Whitehouse said that inspired by his conversations with friend/designer Clark Sabbat, the new collection “is a call for off-line engagement through correspondence like letter-writing and note-passing – forms removed from the alternately overwhelming and oppressive arena of social media, with all its pressures and performance”. 

It encourages its community “to share unspoken vulnerabilities, idle thoughts, challenging feelings, and even simple musings or ideas in direct, unvarnished ways with their peers”.

The idea is that taking the time for penpals “creates space for catharsis, processing, and relationship that can be treasured”.

Sabbat is featured in the campaign, alongside model and content creator Amina LadyMya, who was also in EBIT’s debut True Stories campaign. This time they’re joined by artist and doctor Giovanni Pigliapochi, whose focus is helping improve patients’ wellbeing in relation to conditions like autism, major depression, schizophrenia, and borderline disorders.

The campaign’s fashion direction is by Italian emerging stylist Francesca Cisani with photography by Mauro Maglione. 

The project will appear as a printed publication alongside a pen-and-paper stationery drop, set to launch with the AW24 arrival in-store.

The collection will be available exclusively at MODES online and physical boutiques in Paris and Milan, as well as the retailer’s new London store opening this autumn.